Spooky, Friday the 13th! I skipped last week because I was being a little bump on the beach. Now I’m back and sleepier than ever, so let’s look at what I read this time around!

1. How Information Overload Robs Us of Our Creativity “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? / Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” What an amazing (T.S. Eliot) quote. Everything I’m reading lately is begging me to slow down. I’d like to take it to heart.
2. How to Eat Spicy Food, the New York Times. LOVED this! Basically you need to teach your brain to anticipate spicy food as a good event, not a scary, painful one, and your taste buds will follow. But I loved how the article ended: “Relax and let the plant compounds expand your ability to experience food in a new way….trust that your mouth is not going to burn for the next year.”
3. Alive Time vs. Dead Time. This is pretty encouraging to read if you’re underemployed – it doesn’t make being underemployed any less unfair and untenable, but it may inspire you in the meantime. “This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me.”
4. Why I’ve Never Learned to Cook, Bon Appetit. This essay stuck with me. “She was being gentle. “You should feel comfortable making mistakes because that’s how you learn.” She was saying that I shouldn’t be afraid to start without knowing everything. There was no way to do this without screwing it up first. Look at her, all these years, and look at the burn marks on her arms. Look at the chickens she sometimes still has to throw away.”
5. Caitlin Moran: How Books Made Me a Feminist. "No. They are not the right books to read, if you are a young girl. They are not the voices you should allow in your head. Until you are grown – until you can argue, with confidence, with a narrator; with a genius; with a world-view – girls, do not read books by old men. They live in another century, and you are the future. You, and all those brilliant, beautiful girls, writing in the past.“ I don’t know much about Caitlin Moran, but I agree with her here. I have recently elected to stop reading fantasy novels by male authors for the indefinite future – no matter how cool their ideas, they canNOT escape that male gaze. It creeps in, the unnecessary objectification. And in times like these, I need a break from the misogyny that is comes so naturally to everyone (even me).